Sequence of wrong chords
by son-of-puji
Summary: Cycles of recurrent events, a routine Jackson sticks to and how it pulls him downward through the stages of obsession without him realizing it. Pre- and Post-movie, simultaneously.
1. Tuning up

My new obsession, yeah, blame Mr Murphy for it. I know the fandom is half-dead already, but I don't care, I got used to it.

I try to show here how Jackson got slowly obsessed with Lisa and how everything just repeats itself over and over again, a vicious circle for him. Every second chapter is either a "Then" or "Now", referring to the events before and after the Red Eye Flight, respectively, comparing his emotions, thoughts and acts, and how they (hopefully) mirror each other.

**Disclaimer:** Well, duh. I own a lot of things but not this one. I want to own the monster pen, though.

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**Sequence of wrong chords**

**Chapter 1: Tuning up**

_-Then-_

It arrived in a bland manila folder. They always arrived in that, uniformal and nondescript as it was. Photos, addresses, routes, names and travel schedules all gathered in a neat pack of papers. Jackson set the package down on the desk and stared at the name with a neutral twitch of his brows. A big shot. Now he understood.

"This is _the case_. Don't screw it up, Rippner," his higher-up had warned and he'd released a complacent smirk at that.

"When have I? " Bold as it sounded, it was true. He hadn't known the word _failure_.

He flipped through the photographs that had obviously been downloaded from a governmental website, not that any was needed at all, he had to only switch on the TV. Charles Keefe, the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security.

It was some case, alright, but not that impossible in realization. He had seen and done many wilder things.

The instructions were pretty clear: send a message, big and spectacular enough with as little collateral damage as possible. In short, exterminate Keefe without civilian casualties which would lead to an unnecessary and unwanted national uproar. They evidently wanted to show their power, that they could strike wherever they wanted to without a chance for them to provide protection for the country. One of the heads of Homeland Security – it was a symbol; and targeting only the Deputy, not the Secretary, because that would cause chaos, instead of serving as a message. And Keefe seemed to have pissed off half of the bad guys-community over the past months with his speeches, anyway.

He skimmed through the notes and surveillance reports, and stopped at the page listing remarks of other operatives, those responsible for the messy work. He was done with that part of his life, he left it behind without regret – his skills were better exploited in organizing and coordinating the events than actually carrying them out; not that he wasn't well-trained in the field, but he enjoyed the feeling of power that controlling the events raised in him. His sharp mind didn't like to rest. He tapped his pen along the rows of places and possibilities that had been ruled out. It couldn't be done either at the Department or Keefe's home for both were over-secured, and the latter too out of sight and the customer wanted it to happen in front of the public's eyes. For the same reason, his private plane wasn't good enough, blowing it up 30,000 feet above the ground wouldn't make a big of a show; on the other hand, targeting him in the middle of the car convoy was difficult and might have required some unwanted casualties. That didn't leave too many choices for them.

Jackson pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose, slightly irritated. It was going to be fun. His responsibility was to find a good way they could accomplish the task. He was given as much time as he needed but it had to be done till a huge international conference later the year, which provided him at least three months. He had never needed that much time for any assignments, and he wasn't expecting this one to be different. Three weeks, maybe one month at the worst.

In the upcoming few days he hardly did anything but examine the Keefe files. In his apartment he had a corkboard and he pinned there all the notes that might be useful, yellow post-its wallpapered his desk and littered the small coffee table in the living room. They managed to get hold of Keefe's speech agenda. Fortunate for them, he was planning a travel around the country, visiting big cities on his four-week long campaign-like tour. Cities like New York, San Francisco, Miami and Seattle appeared on the list, and it made his job easier. He could use history, Keefe used to visit these places at least twice a year.

He figured the only chance they had was targeting him during either a speech or his stay at a hotel. Both places were known to them almost for sure: politicians and VIPs liked to stay and visit always the same places, had they been satisfied with it. It took him some time to draw up a list of conference halls and hotels even completed with room numbers in different cities that he was sure Keefe would stay at. Now it was the operatives' turn.

They opted for hotels, and ruled out all of those that were difficult to approach or weren't in a good location. That left him with two on the list: a Hilton in Chicago and the Lux Atlantic in Miami. First they checked out the Hilton, it took a couple more days and some travelling, and they agreed it would be difficult but not impossible. Just when they travelled to Miami and took a single look at the Lux Atlantic and its surrounding they realized there wouldn't be a better location for the task. The hotel looked over the bay, and that fact earned it a win by a nose. They thought launching a missile at the hotel room might look good enough and be effective.

And here came the real job for him: the hotel room Keefe used to stay in was hard to be targeted, or rather easily missed or confused with another one. After examining the blueprints and ground-plans of the hotel, they agreed the penthouse was the best open target. He had to make sure they changed his room, and do it possibly just before his arrival so the security wouldn't be able to search the whole surrounding properly. He knew it from experience it wasn't that easy as it sounded: politicians had a reason to stick to well-tried locations, for security measures of course. This job must have been done from inside, and he needed someone for that, someone with appropriate authority. There weren't too many positions in a hotel for that, not more than two or three.

He checked the website, it was the obvious first step. The hotel manager was a balding man in his late forties, fake smile, expensive suit, designer eyeglasses. A stuck-up prick. He scrolled down to the sales manager: a young man with arrogant, shark eyes, who obviously spent most of his days in the gym and changed his sports car in every three months. He was sure he could have dealt with both of them, maybe not without a little trouble and much persuasion but at least he would have conducted the latter with satisfaction. With a devilish, dry smirk on his lips he scrolled to the segment where they introduced the reception area, most particularly the only position that was of use for him: the front office manager. And that very minute he was sure he found the right person. It was a young brunette with a warm smile, looking helpful, smart and fragile at the same time, and he found himself smiling with satisfaction at the tiny picture, leaning close to the screen.

"You'll be a piece of cake, won't you, Lisa Reisert?"


	2. Tuning up: rerun

**Note: **The twin-chapter of the previous one: it is 'now', so happening after the Red Eye. So to say the second round in the recycling obsession. Hope you get it. Thanks for the reviews in advance.

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**Chapter 2: Tuning up - rerun**

_-Now-_

It was an impressive list. Almost like a table of contents in a medical textbook. Two gunshot wounds, a hole in the trachea, stab-wound in the right thigh, a broken wrist, incomplete fracture in two fingers, slight crack in two ribs and the right forearm, several contusions and grazes mainly on the upper body, internal hemorrhage, minor concussion. It was a wonder there was enough room for it on his medical chart hanging by the foot of his hospital bed.

He was a wreck. It wasn't listed that his ego and mind of magnitude had been slaughtered too, and it hurt more than the physical wounds.

He felt like a cracked thin glass, transparent and fragile, fearing that any minute he could be shattered to smithereens.

When he awoke there was a concert of mechanical sounds, beeps and chirps, and there was the mild smell of antiseptics and dry-cleaning so typical of hospitals. He was hooked on a respirator, an IV cannula was hanging from his left arm, and another machine was monitoring his heart sounds. And he couldn't move a finger. His right arm was wrapped up in a plaster cast, fingers secured with splints, his head, chest and thigh tightly bandaged, a live fire in his throat, scorching his windpipe with every breath. And as a punch line, his left wrist was cuffed with a long chain to the rail around the bed. As he turned his head to the left, through the round window on the door he could see a uniform guarding his room. Not that he could walk even as far as where the bedside table was.

Not that if he wanted to escape, any of it could hold him back.

Or if _they_ decided he should not escape, for that matter. Then all the medical efforts were in vain. And it was very likely they had no intention to let him live. Actually it was a wonder he was still alive.

The IV, the respirator, the heart machine and the bandage from around her forehead were gone by the time they considered it was just decent to pay him a visit. He knew him, once they had worked together on an assignment. He was even insolent enough to bring a very symbolic bouquet of white chrysanthemums and lilies.

"Hitting a funeral parlor on the way here?" Jackson asked, voice barely above a raspy whisper, but still drenched in sarcasm. He tried with all his might to channel as much air through his torn windpipe while speaking as he could without blinding pain but he sounded pathetically weak nevertheless. He had been told the hole would close up fairly quickly, leaving only a small scar behind.

"Isn't it nice of me?" the other man taunted. He was clearly enjoying the situation. Jackson wasn't a popular one among the comrades.

"So, you're the lucky chosen one for the task?" Jackson asked calmly, but he ignored him.

"What a disappointment, Rippner. I'm sure you were told not to screw this up. I think the importance and gravity of this assignment were pretty clear. You are… oops, you _were_ one of the best" he quipped, then remarked with a sly smile, "or at least they thought so, that's why it was given to you. We are not used to such epic failures."

Jackson's jaw clenched, sending a wave of pain through him, radiating from the scar on his neck.

"A nice full report landed at the police about you. Do you have any idea how much work it was, it _is_ to settle this, to cleanse the file cabinets of your little blunder? To make the documents miraculously disappear when someone like Keefe's concerned? He is not the kind of person who'd just let you walk away with it."

"I'm a dead man anyway, so why bother? It's not like she knows anything about the company, you're safe. Just lay the blame on me, it's obvious."

The man eyed him, running his gaze over him, pausing at the bandages and the plaster cast.

"You're a wreck, Rippner. Since when you've been such a wuss? She was just some stupid chick, for crying out loud."

Jackson bit his lower lip to prevent himself from an angry retort he couldn't even form in his head. He really hadn't needed it to be said out loud.

"You are an asset for the company, you don't want to end up on the scrap list."

"I guess it's a bit late now," Jackson scoffed impatiently. "You know what? Do me a favor and keep this little speech to yourself. It's not that it can change anything anyway. I'm sure I'll be able to die without a ceremonial ticking-off. So just get over and done with it."

There was a short silence, both men in deep thoughts around the same subject.

"No respiratory for you to shut off", said Jackson with fake compassion in his voice. "No IV to mess with the fluids. So how you're gonna do it?"

"You don't know how lucky you are," the assassin remarked , this time with real regret on his face. "The Keefe case failed big time but it could be a message, if not as good as originally intended, but a message anyway. As I said you are an investment for the company, and they always make as much profit out of those investments as possible. Now you're given another chance. Next time you fail, no one saves your sorry ass. Take it as a warning."

Jackson just stared at him, trying to hide his surprise and relief. Clearly, the other man didn't expect any reaction for he added without a break:

"By the end of the week you'll be transported to another hospital where it's safe from Keefe and the feds, and you just disappear from sight."

Eventually he was released after three weeks of hospital treatment. He still had his arm and fingers in cast, but all the stitches had been removed from his wounds. He was ordered to rest, but it was an unnecessary remark for he was still frighteningly weak, the cracked ribs giving him a hard time in moving.

The face in the mirror could have belonged to anyone else, it was so foreign. Under the three-week stubble, or rather more like a beard, his skin was paler, his cheekbones more jutting than ever due to heavy weight loss. He had to dress in his old clothes, since he had nothing else there and no one to ask to bring new ones in for him; in the shirt with two bullet-holes and dark crimson drips of blood, the battered suit – his face turned white when his fingers touched the red scarf he had covered his throat wound with. The hospital hadn't thrown it away, it was there, folded neatly. He tossed it in the dustbin.

When he entered his apartment and took a look around, he had to lean against the wall, momentary black-dotted giddiness pouring on him. He hadn't tidied up the flat, and it was still stuck in a month earlier state: in the middle of the room, littering the floor and coffee table, there were the notes and files and photos of his last assignment, all the little details he had been flooded with, bathing in all those weeks, months.

Her face was staring up at him from everywhere, and all he could do was closing his eyes against the harsh reminder of his failure, against the picture he'd built of her in his mind which eventually, to some degree, led to his undoing.

"You were a nasty underestimation, weren't you, Lisa?"


	3. Upbeat

**A/N:** Jackson Rippner, purely professional - most probably for the last time...

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**Chapter 3: Upbeat**

_-Then-_

She had a pathetically thin file. Ordinary people always did.

There were reports from all the authority databases, medical history (tonsillectomy at age five), police records (copy of driver's license and one record of speeding), tax papers, credit history, previous addresses, high school grades (apparently she was real talentless at Chemistry and Physics), her diploma and on a flash drive even her Extended Essay on the method of expense planning in hotel and catering trade (very boring as it turned out), the list of previous employments (the Lux Atlantic was her second job, not counting when she had been selling ice-cream on the shore during high-school, and it wasn't quite good news for people tended to be faithful to their first long-term job, especially if they were successful in it). Her name appeared a few other places, once she'd won a cat toy in some cat food game, she'd been the third in an English grammar contest in elementary school, and played in the field hockey team during high-school (he even found an article of a final between schools where she was mentioned). And that was all about her. On a separate page there were a few data about her parents and brother but only her father lived in Miami. He even got a copy of her parents' divorce documents from three years back.

He could round up only three pictures of her, all tiny: one from the Lux Atlantic homepage, the other from her driver's license where she had a slightly bewildered face as if being surprised that she'd passed the exam, and a graduation photo where she had a horrible hairstyle, as it usually happened on these kinds of pictures.

Jackson stifled a bored yawn. It was still dark in the apartment the company allocated to him. It wasn't too big and with minimal furniture but he didn't need much. They had many resorts in many cities so they could accommodate their agents easily, but he also had many properties all around the country even the company didn't know about. He packed the Reisert-folder along with a high-class camera, binoculars, a notepad and all the wires he needed, and drove off to her current address. It was early Monday morning when he parked the car a block down the street. The neighborhood was still half-asleep. It was one and a half hour later when she finally appeared in the entrance of the building, apparently in a hurry. Jackson could see only the bounce of thick, wavy brown hair as she flung herself in her car parking at the curb, and sped away hitting the gas feverishly. He waited another half hour till the neighborhood cleared out and settled down, and just to give time to leave to anyone she might have shared her apartment with, though there was no sign of it so far. It was better to stay on the safe side, though. He grabbed his bag and let himself in the building, then after eavesdropping on any movement behind her door, he slipped in her apartment with ease. It was on the first floor, with the windows overlooking the street. It made everything so much easier.

He worked fast and was done in less than twenty minutes. He planted a bug in her desk phone (her mobile had been already tapped), and wired the living room and kitchen with small cameras – three, to be precise, perfectly angled; he knew where they had to be turned to provide a clear and useful view. The other premises were rarely wired but not out of any moral reservations – simply because events that held importance in their job seldom happened in bathrooms. It was always the same routine. He put away his stuff, checked out the layout of her apartment once again to memorize it, and let himself out. Every movement professional, efficient and collected.

He met his associate in front of the Lux. He planned on checking his dog in for a night for two reasons: first, they wanted to see the arrangement of the floors firsthand, so they needed an access to ride up to the penthouse. Secondly, he wanted to see his mark during work, how she handled the guests with endless, apocalyptic problems, what her co-workers' attitude was toward her, what authority and respect, if any, she had among them, or if she was in particularly good terms with any of them.

He went in first, giving himself ten minutes head start to get a good picture of the reception area. The lobby was a mess of people and luggage. He sat in one of the designer armchairs in the sitting area opposite the reception desk, holding a stack of brochures and scanned the long counter for her. She wasn't among the girls clad in shiny white dress. Then all he needed was a couple with the issue of the century and she stepped out from an office behind the desk to help the buffled-looking receptionist. She wasn't wearing white but a neat black suit with purple stripes. She was all smooth and professional, all smiling and nodding and pleasing. She was good at it. It took him half a minute to realize this.

He flipped his phone open and when his associate picked it up, he cracked in:

"Choose the redhead. Make a fuss."

And all he had to do was watch the show. The poor redhead -Cynthia?- wasn't having her best day, his associate made sure about it. Reisert appeared again, and all was settled.

He got in the elevator with his man and rode up to his room. It didn't take them more than two hours to check all they wanted to.

Jackson left the hotel -she was still helping the receptionists- and walked up to his car. He expected her to leave the hotel around 6pm, so it gave him a few free hours to run errands. He was quite stunned to see her leave only at 8pm, and suddenly he was sure it wasn't unusual in her life. He followed her home, watched her moving around behind the half-drawn curtains till 11pm when the lights got switched off and he could finally leave his post.

By the end of the week the best he could tell about following her was that she had nice legs. Other than that it was boring to the core. All she did beside work was keeping up life functions. He was almost beside himself with joy when on Saturday evening she went to meet three other girls in a café and drank two cocktails (the same red one) in a row, and had to catch a taxi she got so mellow.

As smart and lively she appeared at work as dull her personal life was. Or rather, she seemed to lack any at all. The surveillance report of her one day didn't take up more than half of a page in his notepad. It wasn't before the weekend when he remembered the surveillance cameras and watched the tapes using a lot of fast-forward, even when she appeared on the monitor.

It was easy to draw a daily schedule of her activity. She rarely surprised him. The only diversity in her life was the occasional phone calls from her father (important note: she seemed to have a close relationship with him), or some friends and relatives, and the old black-and-white movies she sometimes watched, clearly neither of them for the first time. Once or twice she dozed off on the couch in the living room with a book and a quite workless pen in her lap, and one evening she gave evidence of her gourmet-side by putting together a cheese plate, accompanying it with a glass of white wine. Another evening, maybe after getting pissed off at the hotel, she started to clean up her flat but got tired of it halfway through the living room. The other afternoon she hurried out of the bedroom to pick up the phone only wearing a pair of black panties and a blouse – apparently she was caught in the middle of changing. Jackson had thirty full seconds to scrutinize her; unfortunately it seemed to be a wrong number. He took his revenge on her for all those tedious hours she was giving him by rewinding the tape several times to re-watch the scene, even pausing it here and there. It was his lot for entertainment.

Jackson stared at the woman on the monitor, and he'd never been so sure he'd have no trouble with her. Hell, maybe she'd even be grateful for the excitement he was going to expose her to.


	4. Upbeat: rerun

**A/N:** Jackson, trying to evaluate this new situation in a professional way but it isn't easy anymore.

**Niamh W:** Thank you so much for your kind review! Yeah, I'm trying pretty hard to make the progression of his obsession reasonable and gradual, and human-like, too. I hope I can keep it up:)

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**Chapter 4: Upbeat - rerun**

_-Now-_

He'd had endless time in the hospital to sort out his thoughts. Day by day he tried to regain his strength both physically and emotionally, and it was hard to decide which required more effort. The weaker he found himself, the more he felt angry. Anger turned into hatred, and he hated her so venomously, so desperately that it slowly outgrew him. She was all he could think of, _was_ _forced _to think of, every single day, every single moment among the clattering machines and seasick green walls, in the gross hospital gown and with the pain shooting through him, and without even realizing it she had become the centre of his life again, Lisa and his failure, both alive and livid and one. And the hatred… something that'd been cherished for so long, fostered with great care, it could easily slip over a line where it got so obscured it didn't have a name anymore, a border beyond which essential, indispensable things were never questioned. The line between hate and something completely different was thinner than he'd ever imagined, and the mixture of muddy emotions filling him ever since he woke up was so erratic, changeable and full of contradictions that it made him feel sick and overly confused. He was wandering about in the maze of questions that had no answers and answers he'd never asked a question about, emotions, words and facts were clattering in his mind without matching each other. He was shoved into a weak body that didn't seem to be his own, and was filled with thoughts that seemed to originate from someone else, he had so little control over them.

He missed the routine of his old life, its simplicity. Or rather, maybe, of her life.

In the vacuum of his days, stuck in the airlock of physical weakness and vulnerability, he could only live, feed on memories. And now there he was, half-recovered and still in dull pain, back in his apartment, shut among four walls with no external stimuli whatsoever, and he could do nothing but sink back into _her life_. In a wise, brave and clear moment he intended to destroy all the notes and photos and every single paper about her, but as he collected and piled them into the dustbin to set them on fire, all the Lisa-treasures squinting up at him, he waited so long that the match eventually singed his fingers and went out with a weak flicker. And the second one did so, too. And the only thing the flame could set on fire was his animosity again because he became incompetent and indecisive and was left with no strength of will; and it waved a flag in its awake, the red flag of revenge, soothing and satisfying sweet revenge.

Those days he padded through the debris of his delusions, and it was the hardest part, all of them cutting into his sole and he was bleeding all over them, trying to drain the toxic idiocricy out of his system, the fake-images and fateful illusions; sharp-edged self-deception and scattered daydreams were clinking under his feet. There was no such thing as sure thing, now he knew it. She failed him, his plans, his expectations and mostly, his dreams. Maybe, and he would have never admitted that, the latter was the most painful among all.

He read through her folder again, read it like it was a book, skimming through the little personal details of her life though he still remembered everything, he could have recited it like a poem, by heart. He scanned the numerous candid photographs he had taken of her and had admired thousand times, her face imprinted in his mind so vividly, he could have drawn her, had he any talent for it. One of the pictures was a close-up, he remembered taking it one day, camouflaged as a tourist. She hadn't paid attention to him with a camera and guide book in hand, she met too many a day to spare as much as a single glance at them. He'd stood ten feet from her, his heart drumming, and caught her half-profile. He could have counted her eyelashes, had he any intention to do so. He re-watched the surveillance tapes too, his personal favorite black-and-white old movies, chronologically, one by one, his eyes burning at the end, bloodshot and with blurred vision, and he felt he had a temperature.

He analyzed every bit of events, every word they had shared, every moment that had gone wrong; it was inevitable for his mental recovery to know what he should have done differently, or so he thought. Actually, it made him bitter and filled him with thick self-disgust so solidly that it intertwined with the lingering hatred for her, and created something loathsome, a living Golem of misery.

He'd already realized when he made the fatal mistake: right in the beginning by _choosing her_. He could already see the flaw in the plan: she was used to solving everyday crisis at the hotel, it made her quick-thinking, resourceful. Now he was able to admit it, the understatement of the year that he'd chosen her just because she was a woman, just because he'd thought he could intimidate her. Just because women were known to act on emotions, without thinking clear. Because he thought she would be weak in her decisions, easily bending in the direction he wanted her to bend. She laughed in his face in the end, rubbing his nose in his own misjudgment, and he hated her with all the multiplied hate that was awoken in his chest and should have addressed to himself for the catastrophic failure he'd made. She razed him to the ground: she almost destroyed him, almost destroyed his job, and though it was partly his fault, since he couldn't hate himself, couldn't take revenge on himself, he blamed her instead.

As soon as he was strong enough to leave his apartment and the casts were removed too, he started to search for her. She'd left her previous apartment, she'd even sold her car but it was a pathetic attempt at disappearing. He enjoyed the chase, dove into it almost with perversity, utterly intrigued how thoroughly she could cover up her tracks. She couldn't, she was still no match for his abilities. A few days later he was again at her apartment building, checking out the neighborhood, getting used to the new surroundings. He told himself he didn't want to lose track of her, just to know where to find her if he decided to take his revenge, but there was no real, no _fitting_ explanation on the following days. He continued the surveillance on her, almost out of habit, falling into it like it was fresh air, fresh blood in his veins. He had grown so accustomed to stalking her over those weeks that he couldn't drop the activity.

There was a moment in his car, a déjà vu moment of surveillance when he couldn't recall the reason of him sitting there. It felt like a job, like any time before but his mind was clouded, his muscles tensed, and under the surface its importance cracked his bones. It was personal, and he didn't know how to handle personal cases. In a job he had specific instructions with specific result required but now… he didn't know the direction he was heading to. With upsetting the Keefe plan, she took something else from him, something stone-hard, ice-cold, fact-based. When it concerned revenge, it never was fact-based. He didn't intend to make the same mistake again like he had done by pursuing her to her father's house. While he was sitting there in the comforting and familiar silence of his car, he tried to translate the personal issue into business one: to define the result he wanted to reach and find a way to accomplish it. It shouldn't be so difficult. The routine sewn in his skin, mind and limbs should work automatically.

And then it poured back on him mockingly, the chipped professionalism, when parking with his car near her house an early morning and knowing it was time for her to wake up, all he could think of was the wires he should have brought along so later he could watch her climb out of bed. His stomach was like a stone, cold and hard, a nauseating feeling stirring in it, and it was anything but professional. Just as the frantic, painful throbs of his heart against his ribcage, they weren't professional either. She opened the door to the building, a bounce of brown hair, a lively glance over the street, her skirt swimming around her knees, and he felt his legs go numb as if suddenly someone had broken his spine. He half-expected his wounds start bleeding at the mere sight of her, and had to pull down the window because his throat became too tight to breathe easily. A part of him, a relentless, bloodthirsty part of him, just wanted to step on the gas and ram in her car from behind, or jump the curb and run over her because even her existence, her well-being was defying him; and it would be over, then and there. But it was a coward solution: it was as if he wanted to avoid confrontation with her. He watched her dumbly, almost shocked, driving away, his hands frozen on the wheel, the key in the ignition untouched.

It felt like a second defeat, it felt like she again gained the upper hand because this time it was her who brought excitement in _his_ life.


	5. Crescendo

**A/N:** And here comes the turning point...

**EmpireX:** thanks for the comment:) Actually, I hope you won't be too disappointed but I dont think there will be a first contact. Or actually, not in _that _meaning or way. I'm happy you enjoy it, though, really thanks!

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**Chapter 5: Crescendo**

_-Then-_

Three weeks surveillance was a personal record. The last time he had spent such a long time following somebody was when he'd been assigned to a job concerning an artist, an eccentric painter and extravagant sculptor, who never spent two consecutive nights at the same place; sometimes not even in the same country. That time Jackson travelled more than normally in a half year, though in his job travelling was a general feature.

Lisa Reisert was everything but that artist. Three weeks surveillance meant driving the apartment-hotel distance twice a day, and hearing through his whole CD-collection at least three times a week, so he wanted to scream in the end.

According to Keefe's updated schedule, his Miami conference wasn't due in five weeks. Though Jackson was given endless time for this assignment, he seriously considered to abandon it for a month and undertake another one, and a week before Keefe would come to Miami he was going to pick up the thread again. It was just reasonable.

He'd already decided the best way to make her cooperate was to threaten her with her father's life. She met him almost every Sunday, and sometimes even during the week. They would go and grab a coffee somewhere or simply sit in a park or at his house for a little talk. He hadn't planned anything else yet. On the Day he might lock himself up in her apartment before she'd leave for work, and force her to change Keefe's room. Or he would kidnap her during her lunch break. Or he might simply call her at work and mention the threat on daddy's life, though he preferred physical contact for he could keep a closer eye on her, just in case.

During the idle hours he set in order all the notes he'd written about her, putting them systematically in place. One stack for the things she liked or often did: nibbling olives, taking a walk when it was about to rain, picking up snails and putting them beside the sidewalk so no one would step on them, listening to Sinatra when she felt a bit down. He knew she liked watching travel magazines, and even the reruns if they were about European destinations. She never missed documentary films about French painters, and on her walls she had a few framed copies of placards by Toulouse-Lautrec. She would buy candles with different fragrance completely on impulse, but rarely lit any of them. She had a bouquet of dried flowers on a dresser in the hall that she had re-arranged at least three times so far, never really satisfied with the result. If she got home before sunset, she went in a nearby park for a little jogging but it mostly ended up in mindless walking, and she always got home before twilight.

Then there was the collection of notes about her pet peeves, how she hated doors left ajar or the brown circular tea-stains in her cup, how she was the only one in the building who discarded the numerous fly papers and leaflets stuck in the mailbox, and he loved watching her crossing the street just to avoid a group of construction workers and their wolf-whistles. She rarely ate chocolate and she hated the smell of air-freshener in cars, just as much as slow walking people when she went to the mall. She was afraid of bugs with exoskeleton, lightning (though in a way it fascinated her), closed parking lots (she always tried to park at curbside, and kept a can of pepper spray in her purse) and flight. Actually, this last was the most useful information he collected about her.

Her life was predictable, and even her decisions and choices held little surprise which satisfied him because it was going to make his job less risky but also another emotion was awoken beside contentment: every time he could guess what she'd do in a situation and was proved right, he somehow felt closer to her. The more he felt she became an open book in his eyes, the more he developed a faint sense of possessive curiosity which led him to keep an unreasonable and unnecessary focus on her. His notes became almost frantic, and overly detailed and with that, less significant. He dissociated her life to fragments and particles as if it was a puzzle he later enjoyed putting back together.

And then, he realized only when the sun rose above the horizon that he'd been spending the whole night (the first in the series of many) in his car as if he didn't want to miss a single moment of her life, no matter if she was sleeping or awake. He was beyond tired, his mind stuck in a numb state. Later in the morning she opened the window, a soft smile on her face as she gazed up at the cloudless sky. She held a cup of coffee (her favorite mug, he noticed) as she leaned against the windowsill. He could almost feel the bitter, velvety smell in his nose, and involuntary breathed in deeply. She had her hair fixed up loosely, and he liked the way her locks defied and escaped the pin, falling and dancing around her face. He could see her lips moving like she was talking to someone hidden, someone behind her, maybe still in the bed, but he knew she was only singing along with the radio she always switched on in the morning.

He was sitting there in silence, leaning over the steering wheel, staring at her almost mesmerized. And that moment suddenly desire rushed over him, flooding him from head to toe. It wasn't only physical desire, rather more of yearning for something he had never realized he wanted and what he knew he could never have; for everything that she represented with the wrinkled pjs, soft, still drowsy talking to someone she probably left lying in the bed, the good morning-smile and coffee scent. Her small, delicate form against the morning sun – he could almost see it with his mind's eye how she'd look watching her _from_ _inside_ the room. Everything so mundane, disillusioning even, and still, dull ache shot through him. The sinking feeling weighed down on him, pushing him deeper in the seat, sucking the air out of the car, and finally he couldn't stare at her any longer. The feeling of something very close to defeat made him turn the key in the ignition and drive away.

He decided he wouldn't go back again. That night he stayed away from there, stayed away from the newborn feeling he felt strange and unwanted inside him but couldn't eliminate. He wanted to stay away from her for good, at least till the job had to be done but it was a losing game.

Then one night he found himself sitting on his couch, surrounded by the notes about her, a list of movies she'd watched and a box of Häagen-Dazs (blueberry, her favorite) though he never ate ice-cream and couldn't even recall where he'd gotten this particular box; and suddenly he got sick of it all. The first two thoughts coming rushing over him and clashing in his mind were the exact opposite of each other but equally strong: one was that the first thing in the morning he was going over her apartment and destroy all the wires there, except for the bug in the phone; the other was the glaring opposite: to wire the other rooms too, more precisely the bedroom and bathroom. Since both of them were equally appealing or much recommended, unable to decide, he opted to leave everything untouched.

He paced up and down, from wall to wall, from window to bed like a caged animal. He felt like someone in a rehabilitation center, deprived of whatever addiction made him end up there. He forced himself to get some sleep but all he did was watching the shadows dance around on the ceiling. He hadn't seen her for two or three days. He started to wonder what she was doing. Beside sleeping, of course. On Monday morning she would always oversleep because she'd been watching movies till late night on Sunday. He pressed his eyes shut, trying to remember what day it was. He lost track of time and days in general. Wednesday, maybe? On Wednesdays she would grab an orange-flavored cappuccino at Starbucks (no sugar added) before work. Apparently she needed this little treatment on this particular day of the week, and it took him quite a lot of effort and snooping around to find out that she had one-to-one meetings with her higher-up every Wednesday. Obviously she didn't enjoy them.

Curiosity got the better of him. Darkness was still clinging to the sky when he was already out of bed, dressed and with car keys in hand. He hadn't slept a wink. Just double-checking, he muttered in the silence of his car, adjusting the rear-view mirror and examining the dark circles below his eyes. Double-checking. It sounded like a lie.

An hour later he followed her stiffly towards the Lux Atlantic, and pulled his lips in a dry, tight smile as she made a stop at the first Starbucks.

Yeah, she was predictable in her fixations. But he was that, too.


	6. Crescendo: rerun

**Rose Eclipse:** Thanks for stopping by here as well^^ And sure, I wouldn't kill Jackson, he is the reason I'm onto this in the first place;) And it is easier this way, I didn't want him to be on the run 24/7.

**NiamhW, Empire X:** thank you for the support!

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**Chapter 6: Crescendo - rerun**

_-Now-_

He showed quite a slow recovery and he blamed it on her because he figured he should recuperate first on mental level and it was a hard task. Somehow he had an impression an essential part of him was missing, maybe was in her possession and he was uneasy whenever he couldn't keep an eye on her.

It was Monday morning. She wasn't oversleeping, and it surprised him. Tiny thing, insignificant, but if caught him off-guard nonetheless. No late night movies on Sunday nights apparently, and it made him wonder if it had to do anything with him. She sauntered to her car, cell phone glued to the ear, and she was cheerfully chatting with someone. She wore a violet shirt and a matching skirt he'd never seen before, surely a new one since he liked to think he knew all her garments. Even the long, thin silver earrings seemed to be unfamiliar to him. Something pierced his heart so painfully that he involuntarily plastered his palm over it, as if in attempt to keep it together.

She was light like a leaf flying on the back of the wind.

She looked like she had moved on.

And in a way he envied her this success.

He shut his eyes and leaned his head back against the headrest, fighting something that was unsettlingly close to disappointment. If he wanted to be downright straightforward to himself, it kicked almost like a betrayal. _She had cheated on me_, he nearly gagged at the idea and not because it was nonsense but because it shredded his guts. He wanted to see the remnants, the evidence of their encounter on her, just the way he was wearing them, but she looked unaffected, she looked like she had looked before. If he couldn't move on, she shouldn't have moved on either. He wanted her to be stuck in time, on that day, on that plane, like he did, stuck in his seat, 18F, stuck in his car for those eight weeks and there was no way out, no turning his back and walking away. She couldn't just tear the bond that tied them together. How could she laugh like that, talk like that? Like that day never happened? Like they had never met? At this thought his hands balled into trembling fists.

Unlike after her parking lot trauma, now she didn't seem to crawl back in her safe liar – for a desperate, soul-smashing moment white, unrestrained rage blinded him because he thought he was insignificant in the course of her life, he had no impact on it. Unlike… his teeth creaked as he recalled the scar on her skin. He hated that man, he hated the fact that he had been able to cross a line, gain a proximity (oh, how he wanted to touch her this very moment) and a level of importance he didn't manage to. He envied him, because he could be a station in her life, a landmark, a hinge around which her life took a completely different turn; he'd left behind his signature on her and became a reason for everything she was now. He could be the one she would never forget. His own little stunt, however, seemed to have no effect on her, and his stomach clenched with feral jealousy. He was forgotten, left behind like people leave behind frightening but already fading experiences, momentary shocks: the dull memory of fear was nowhere near a constant dread with a reminder of a scar. He felt helpless and impotent that he couldn't be like the other man. No, he wouldn't have done the same to her, he wasn't that type of man, stooping so low was out of question. He craved for the same infinite control over her, to wear her down, to tame her - even if in a sick way he had enjoyed the challenge she had been putting up -, and yes, to touch her and it was maddening that someone had preceded him.

And then for a slightest moment she glanced up and around, it was an instinctive movement, one of those that burn in unnoticed, and he smiled almost with relief. She was looking for tails. She was looking for him. He was wondering if she knew he was already released from the hospital, and definitely wasn't heading to jail. She was probably waiting for him to show up.

He threw himself into stalking her with renewed enthusiasm. He had to be careful though, Lisa indeed was more alert, more suspicious after the predicament he'd pulled her into, and she already knew his face, he couldn't blend in like he had before. Now she regularly took a look around when stepping out in the street, and sometimes drove on different routes to her workplace.

He wasn't monitoring her daily activity now, he was taking notes on the differences, all the things she was doing otherwise than in the past.

He enjoyed her squirm because it told him he caused it, and the heady, vibrating glee he felt at the thought of his imprint in her life was almost sexually satisfying. There was a thick, sick obsession-like fog hanging around him, visiting him in nights till the crack of dawn when he got so tired he fell asleep in the armchair, dressed and in an awkward position. It was then when he decided that he would sleep in his car in front of her apartment. He thought it was curiosity, keeping a tab on the prey. In fact, deep inside he suspected it was something else.

Then he received new assignments and was forced to spend time on them, keep focused and prove he was still professional and back in business. If he really was. Sometimes it felt he had to fall back into the rut after years of interruption. He couldn't make himself to set aside her folders, they were scattered around in the flat like rare bric-a-bracs, a few photos on the kitchen counter, some notes on the bedside table, a notepad page of her daily schedule stuck on the medicine cupboard in the bathroom: they belonged there, everywhere, they were the part of the furniture and his life. He often found himself enraptured by them. So he spared a space on the living room coffee table for the new assignment files (not even half of the table, actually), and engaged in solving them mostly out of pure routine and nothing else.

For some occasions he even had to leave the city when he was already strong enough to travel far, somewhat reluctantly he did, continuously craving for going back, and the minute he set his feet back on Miami ground he went back watching her. In every free time between assignments, stolen from nights he should have used for recuperation, he was lurking around her.

He didn't even see how the same old fixation was consuming him again.


	7. Foul catharsis

**A/N: **My favourite stage: pure obsession...

_Thank you so much for your comments, they really make me happy!^^_

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**Chapter 7: Foul catharsis**

_-Then-_

He spent disturbingly - no: alarmingly - little time in his apartment. He would go there to take a shower and get changed, and mostly that was all about it. He spent only every second or third night there, and even then it wasn't more than four hours of sleep. He got perfectly used to sleeping in his car. Provided, the car was parked in front of her flat. He never tried to figure out why he felt uneasy and anxious if he couldn't keep an eye on her or her apartment, he would answer with a definite and obvious shrug anyway that he was defending his prey. No one should do any harm to her but him. She didn't live in a shady area but one could never be cautious enough. Bad things happened… He was an excellent hypocrite, there was no denying of that.

The only outstanding event happened on a Friday night when the lights in her apartment were suddenly turned on, and he squinted at the clock on the dashboard. 3:10 am. The alarms in his head went off, and without thinking he got out of the car. All he could see through the curtains was that she was moving around in the kitchen. There was no sign of any kind of danger. He relaxed. He had to wait till the next day for the surveillance tapes to find out she was making herself scrambled eggs. What an indulgence. It was almost ridiculous how he couldn't come up with a wilder thing she'd done during the time he had been following her. Except maybe for one time when she snatched the daily newspaper from one of her neighbor's mailbox but even then she put it back in the evening.

And still, against all reasoning, he didn't seem to be able to cease stalking her. Dull and boring as she was, it didn't tire him anymore. The little bits and moments of her life became the part of _his life_ and he was flowing into it, watching every otherwise insignificant event with relish. There was something around her that fascinated him so much that sometimes it turned into a faint ache of craving. In the uneventful hours of nights he was absent-mindedly trying to insert himself into the flow of her life, into the daily routines he knew everything about. And sometimes he was trying to imagine it the other way around, making her be the part of _his life_.

For quite a long time he couldn't grasp the word that described her the best and gave him the pang that usually missing things evoked, then it dawned on him in its simplicity: she was _normal_ and lived an utterly _normal_ life he'd never had a chance to experience. Everything about his life and around him, all the relationships he'd ever made were hectic and abnormal and shallow and mendacious. She was different. The likes of him and the likes of her: the two sets had no point of intersection and it pooled his throat with a bitter taste, bearing impotent, white anger. He had never seen the contrast so harshly between what he had and what he could have had, had his life taken a different direction ages ago. This was the first time he regretted it. That he was probably way beyond redemption.

One day when she left for work, he didn't follow her. He got out of his car and had to chase back the excitement prancing in his stomach to its dark recesses where he wouldn't feel it. It was going to be his second time in her apartment, and he couldn't help but examine the difference between the two occasions. The feelings rushing over him then and now were poles apart.

The first thing he noted stepping in the flat was the lingering scent of perfume in the air. He breathed it in, filling his lungs as if it was oxygen. He went through the rooms methodically. In the hall he eyed the row of neatly stacked shoes (he picked one up to check her size), then moved on to the kitchen where he opened the refrigerator, sweeping his gaze along the contents with pure curiosity. He went along all the over-the-counter cupboards, examining the snacks she kept, and the mugs he was already familiar with after so many hours of tape-watching. In the living room he lifted up the book she showed so little progress with -Dr. Phil, no wonder- and read the spines on the bookcase. A whole shelf full of self-help books. That pulled a frown over his forehead for she didn't strike him as someone with serious issues. Trauma, mental upset, lack of quietude and poise of mind, self-deprecation? He scribbled down the questions. It might help him if it came to confront her. Press your fingers where it hurts. He had to find her sore point.

In the bedroom he went straight to her closet, brushing his fingers along the fabric of her clothes, pulling out drawers and smiling to himself. Oh God, he loved his job. The bathroom was a cavalcade of fragrances. He opened her bottle of shampoo and nuzzled in the scent, then moved on to the shower gel, body lotion and all the crèmes and tubes he didn't even have an idea what for were used. He found two different bottles of perfume, both half-empty and for long minutes he was just standing there, inhaling it to memorize and bring her scent with him.

He knew he shouldn't have done it, any of it. In this profession it was a big no-no. He crossed a line that should have never been crossed. But he couldn't help it.

And it was only the first piece in a puzzle of an undeniably foolish fixed idea.

He could blend in perfectly, be invisible if he wanted to, he could change his appearance if he had to be forgettable, anything but outstanding. He pulled on a tennis shirt, took on sunglasses, even topped it with a gross baseball cap, just for the heck of it, and stood behind her in the line at the grocery. This was the first time he could see her up close. Even in high-heels she was shorter than him by a convenient difference, not too little, not too much, exactly how he liked it. Today she wore the perfume from the orange teardrop-shaped bottle, he recognized it easily. Her curls were just within reach, the bottle of water in his hand almost brushing them. He reached out, craving for feeling the soft strands of her hair, mesmerized and bewitched, following the bright waves with his eyes, when he caught himself just an inch from them. Inwardly, he cursed himself. He couldn't be that childish, unable to resist a shiny new toy catching his interest. He pulled his hand back, and couldn't deny how empty they felt, how unwhole without the memory of the touch of her hair.

In his notepad he had a list, almost like a shopping list. He'd collected all the things she liked. He knew she ate cinnamon cereal for breakfast, she liked lemon Tastykakes, grapefruit, she loved seafood, especially salmon and calamari rings, and when watching old movies she would drink mint-flavored tea with gingerbread.

Borderline obsession for details? Maybe. He'd always been like that, if not to this rate. He liked to think he was only cautious, anxious to be prepared for everything, so there would be no surprise to slip on. So far though, he could always prioritize between the myriads of details and decide what was significant, what had any gravity in his task. With her, he never even tried to.

Actually, none of the above seemed to be crucial information for the task but he told himself it might come in handy, one would never know. He shook his head inwardly, not without disgust. Yeah, maybe he could lure her into a dark alleyway with cinnamon cereal and bribe her into cooperation with a box of Tastykakes.

He'd never known the word _pathetic_ before, and now it weighed on him, every single letter crushing him.

He followed her to the corner café where she usually met with her friends. This time the little redhead from the hotel -Cynthia?- showed up, too. It might be important, he thought. He sneaked up closer to the counter as she got her order. The same red cocktail as always. Now he knew it was a Sea Breeze. It might be useful, check the ingredients, he reminded himself. He could already imagine how to use it in a _chance_ encounter with her. He had a lot of time on his hands even to compose a whole conversation, completed with expressions (Surprise, suspicion. Amusement, maybe?) from her side, while she was chatting with her friends. Girl topics. He felt sick, and it was unbearably hot in there. He liked the way she laughed, clear and not too prominent. He wondered briefly if she would ever laugh with him. He wasn't sure.

He spotted a group of men farther away. One of them seemed to be interested in her but she either didn't catch it or didn't feel like returning it. And that very moment he suddenly realized what had never occurred to him so far: the total lack of men in her life, apart from her father, Dr. Phil and Cary Grant. She was pretty, she was beautiful, seemed nice and intelligent, she could be cheerful and surely entertaining, and there was no reason why she wouldn't have a little household of suitors – apart from the reason _she didn't _want to date. This possibility, strangely, sent a warm glee through his stomach. The feeling was sick and possessive, as if watching her day-and-night entitled him to be the only man in her life, again beside daddy, of course. He was the first man to see her wake up in the morning, and the last to watch her go to bed. He couldn't touch her but no one else did either. She was a loner, and maybe because he was a loner too, it made him attached to her a bit more. He had his own reasons, though, but why she would choose a life like that he didn't know. All those self-help books in her flat, all the lonely evenings in front of the black-and-white movies came back to him. It intrigued him to the core. Was it because of her parents' divorce that she still felt shaken? Or someone broke her heart so severely that she couldn't move on? Was she afraid of attachment, reluctant to lose the infinite freedom she was possessing now? He wrote this down too and wanted to come up with more possible arguments but couldn't find any.

On his way to the restroom he made sure to _accidentally_ stumble into the guy eying her and shove his elbow between his ribs with a satisfied smile. He knew pretty well where exactly the hit should be placed to knock the air out of the opponent. And the best was, in the crowd the other man hadn't even seen it coming.

When Lisa started to leave, there were already quite a lot of people at the café. It was the usual Saturday night crowd. He mingled in among them, being one of the faceless guests, and his heart was throbbing painfully against his ribs, huge, loud thumps. He slipped past her, and as he did so, he brushed his hands against her arms as if guiding her out of the way, an innocent move, running only his fingertips along them from shoulder to elbow and feeling her skin. She jumped slightly at the contact but by the time she turned around, he'd already disappeared, stolen treasure of the imprint of her skin embroidered in his fingertips. A stalker's loot.

That was a terrible night. When he left, it was raining outside, and he felt it was going to wash him away. Or maybe he only wished so.


	8. Foul catharsis: rerun

**A/N:** Jackson, still on Stage: Obsession, this time (hopefully) it's a bit more destructive and sick and maybe pathetic too.  
This chapter is my personal favorite:)

_Thank you for the reviews in advance!_

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**Chapter 8: Foul catharsis - rerun**

_-Now-_

The mere prospect of not going anywhere near her during the surveillance was almost like starving to a near-death state. His mind was working on the problem so feverishly that it was exhausting, draining all his energy. He remembered the times when he had approached her in different places, a grocery store, her favorite corner café, in the street and knowing he couldn't do that now without immediately revealing himself made him almost desperate. He had a feeling, without the physical contact - not really a contact in the dictionary meaning, maybe proximity - he wouldn't be able to fully prepare whatever he wanted to pull on her.

The only time he could be within a few feet from her was the result of a risky and extremely lucky attempt. He was at her favorite lunch place (she would order something with grilled cheese at least once a week, they brought it here to perfection, he had to admit), a cozy little restaurant with huge display windows; he was sitting right there, with his back to the door, when she appeared in the street. For a minute she halted, stepping closer to the window that had reflective surface from the outside, and while she was absent-mindedly fixing her curls in the mirror, smoothing out wrinkles on her skirt, he was sitting there on the other side of the glass, a foot away, maybe two feet, and unbeknownst to her they were staring at each other, his hand automatically jerking toward her, fingers touching, stroking even, the window; and suddenly he felt stupid and embarrassed. When she stepped in, faint clinking of heels against the tiled floor, he escaped the place when she wasn't watching.

He'd thought determinedly that it would quench his need for going near her. Instead, it resulted in the contrary.

He soon found another change in her behavior: she didn't drive away advances from men anymore. Sometimes, rarely though, she let herself flirt with them, but after a while she always got a bit bored or even spaced out. Suddenly a thought hit him, sending a warm rush, almost lust through him: most probably he was the first man in two years she'd given a chance when she'd joined him at Tex Mex, she'd been interested enough in him to let down her guards, and he could have been… Here he stopped abruptly. There was no point in finishing it anymore and the tickling pleasure he'd felt turned into scratching bitterness.

This slight opening in her attitude showed him she was finally ready to move on after the hideous parking lot incident. As if fighting and outwitting Jackson she had realized she was strong enough to defend herself against any man, that she didn't have to hide anymore. Jackson didn't like this. He wanted her to be under the after-effect of their encounter just as he still was. He preferred her being a loner. For him; it had to be that way. She'd marked him, and in his mind's eye that made them belong together like a hangman and the condemned but for a moment he couldn't tell how the roles were cast. Every time he glanced in the mirror he was reminded of her, and he wanted her to remember him just as much as he couldn't forget her, and it chased him into coming up with almost frantic ideas.

One time, and he was even a bit proud of it, maybe because of the deformed pleasure he squeezed out of it, he hired someone to play a role when she went out on another cocktail night, because he wanted to see his reflection on her, the figures and lines that being reminded of him would paint on her face. He was watching them from a safe distance, from a dark corner perfect for stalkers and perverts (maybe he was both), anxious to see her reaction. Even from where he was sitting Jackson could tell when the other man introduced himself. He told him to use the name Dave Jackson, in an 'I'm Bond, James Bond' style. He loved the way her lips twitched. Then Mr. Charmer was ordering a Scotch for himself and without asking - although she still had an almost full glass of Martini in front of her – a Sea Breeze for her. She went pale, visible recoil in her movement and she stealthily glanced around the room and over her new acquaintance. It wasn't only fear in her eyes, maybe that was the smallest part. It was a vibrant mixture of suspicion, worry and anger with mild disgust which drew a tense, distorted smile on Jackson's face, and bitter too. Mr. Charmer casually told her she looked like the Sea Breeze type (some explanation…), then went on with the blather, not sensing the change in her attitude. And just when she started to relax he stroke up the subject of professions, asking Lisa about her job and answering her questions about his: he was organizing certain ceremonies and _events_ he was more than vague about. Even from the distance he could see her lips become a thin line, body instinctively drawing farther and she stole another glance at the faraway corners. Jackson had to retract in the shadows. He could feel she was searching for him. Not for a faceless threat or lurker, no, she wanted to spot him, and it sent a warm tremble through his stomach, and radiated along his whole body. Less than five minutes later she excused herself and headed for the restroom and Jackson was smiling because he knew she'd slip out of the café when Mr. Charmer wasn't paying attention, little cautious, smart Lisa, and he almost laughed that the other man wasn't even aware that he was being ditched. And true enough, she left the place like smoke, with a swift enviable movement. But she couldn't escape Jackson.

It was just the question of time, he always knew. There weren't a lot of things he could resist concerning her, and sneaking in her apartment was surely not among them.

The thrill was the same, and the colors, scents, too, her little purple slippers in the hall. This new flat had a somewhat similar layout to the previous one, beige and sun-yellow tones, huge windows and green shades. The same old brown sofa in the living room. He wanted to enter the apartment only once, just to revisit the memories he had been keeping of it, cherishing in his mind, maybe wishing to update them. And then, it became a habit all at once. When she left for work, he let himself in, shrugged out of his suit and hung it in the hall, even took off his shoes. He would set the kettle on the oven, make tea and pour it in her favorite mug. He would sip it nestled on her sofa. Of course, in the end he always washed and dried it, and put it back in the cupboard, leaving everything unchanged, untouched. He would wash his hands with her soap – he checked on the packaging of a spare one in the drawer, it was lavender-scented. He checked out her shelf for a book to read, and was surprised to find she'd got rid of all the Dr. Phil and other self-help books – he found them later in a battered cardboard box stuffed in a closet in the hall. He chose a book - she had many history-related and adventure-centric novels among a lot of French classics - and would read a chapter every time he stayed there, even leaving the bookmark in it. One time he couldn't resist and lay down on her bed, just beside her pillow, a hand lightly placed on it - he found a single auburn hair there, bright and curly, he coiled it around his fingers playfully, velvety wire-snake biting in his flesh; he could have fallen asleep right there, he mused if he could have gotten a better sleep here than in his own bed. Somehow he was sure he would. Then smirked to himself, a wolfish smirk: he was the Snow White of grim tales, terror tales even, monstrous, stalking Snow White.

He was living in her apartment like they were a couple working different shifts, she in daytime and he in the night, never meeting each other, and he pretended it was true. He was moving around like he belonged there, almost tempted to leave messages for her on the refrigerator door like 'laundry is fetched' or 'don't wait up, be home late'. He might even scribble 'Love, J' at the bottom. Or then again, might not. 'Yours' might fit better anyway, he mused bitterly with sudden honesty and clear sight which was quite unique those days.

He liked this new situation, liked it too much and didn't even realize what a secondhand life he was living. Maybe it was his idea for revenge: intruding her life, violating it even if she didn't know about it. Or this was how he flagged it.

It was a wild idea, maybe hair-raising even, hit him like a train without the lights on, out of nowhere. He just looked in her refrigerator and found this bottle of red wine, almost empty, and the train clashed in his mind, (later it ran over him, if not literally, a pathetic mess on the track, but right now he couldn't foresee it). She had this new habit of drinking a small glass almost every evening, maybe she'd read it somewhere it was healthy. He put enough sleeping pills in it to have her surely and steadily fall asleep. When he entered her flat that night (had to suppress the urge to call out 'I'm home, honey', still he snickered at the idea and deemed it disturbingly tempting), he found her fully dressed, flat on her back lying across the bed, sleeping soundly, one slipper still balancing loosely on her toe. He sat beside her, suddenly unsure of what he wanted to do; he hadn't planned anything, just acted on impulse and realized only now that all those weeks watching her tensely and closely he had never seen her sleep. He had no idea how long he had been sitting there, watching her chest rise and fall, the half-open lips and already messy hair, the slight movements under the lids. The steady rhythm in the blue veins on her neck, dancing with the faint ticking of the second hand on his watch, tick-tack, pulse-pulse. Her fingers curled in her own shirt, as if frozen halfway through stripping.

He wanted so achingly to just stretch himself out beside her and follow suit, their breaths a harmonic, synchronized rhythm, the warmth emitting from their bodies mingling, embracing, unfolding. He caught himself halfway in the motion, and as though willing to mask the momentary confusion, or more exactly frailty, even before himself he continued the movement by leaning over her, halting just an inch from her nose: "I could do anything to you, Leese, right now. Anything I want. And it's power."

Coward power, though, unfair one, surreptitious, not preserved for battlefields or face-to-face mind games but for vile attack from ambush, treacherous – but he was an assassin, to begin with, not a warrior and he didn't devote himself to analyze the nuances of phrases.

He didn't see it immediately but it was also another kind of power if he chose _not_ to do anything to her. He deemed it as defeat, though; it was a concept his personality could not digest. For the moment, he retreated and that was, too, already a defeat in his eyes.

He reached out, only with two fingers, cautiously like she was cinder or even more an unknown species of animal, warily, and hovered over her. He couldn't decide what to touch, if touch at all. He was lingering there, bent over her face, and he imagined gripping her, pressing, squeezing, bruising, strangling. Stroking. That, too, crossed his mind. He could have done anything to her, now, there, she was asleep, his flag of revenge waved redly in front of his eyes but now and there, this way, it wasn't satisfying for him. He wanted her to be awake, to see the fear in her eyes, the realization that he finally came for her (maybe, he was more of a warrior than he thought of himself). He could have woken her up somehow or wait for her to wake and see him the first thing when opening her eyes but he still had no answers for questions he could not go on without.

What kind of revenge would fit? Eye for en eye? He placed a hand over her neck, just over, not on it, never touching her skin because - he would have never admitted it - he was afraid it would petrify him or like a siren-song mess him, seduce him and he would perish; and then she sighed, a little drowsy moan but like the butterfly wing, it caused a tornado in his chest and it blew away everything, ruined whatever half-born decisions and plans he was keeping there. He felt, no, he _knew_ (and it was worse), he couldn't hurt her, not now, not when she was so peaceful, on his mercy, even in her unconsciousness managing to bind him to her in a way he didn't want to, and she was beautiful, more beautiful than ever before maybe exactly because of all these, because he could have killed her if he really-really wanted to, because now, only now when she was sleeping, he controlled her, and also because even now he could not have her.

He shot up from the bed, feeling powerless, almost like a machine, unplugged, his hands – never before hesitating in a murder – uselessly hanging at his side. She somehow switched him off, or so he felt.

He didn't question this sudden inability. He called "hate" by its name, called "revenge" to come forth but neither appeared, they stayed hidden, maybe asleep like her. He recalled failure then, the self-destructive fuel, but now it was only a dull pain in his guts, watered down, non-flammable.

He strode out of the room; on his way he grabbed the bottle of wine and drained the remaining sips of liquid in the sink so he would never ever have the chance to come back here while she was sleeping because he was in fear of the feeling hitting him, because it was weakness and foolish and failure of all things, because she seemed even stronger asleep than when awake and it was ridiculous on its own; and he silently left.

He thought this way he would also leave this momentary weakness behind, spilled on her blanket, scattered on the bedroom floor. But maybe it was only wishful thinking.


	9. The last chords

**A/N:** Toward the peak, or rather, the end of the first cycle of obsession: we are right before the flight.

_Thank you, all of you who take the time and comment on this story from week to week, I really appreciate it. 3_

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**Chapter 9: The last chords**

_-Then-_

Eight days. His stomach convulsed with every 7am news signal filling the silence of his car. Seven days. The tension building in him was almost unfamiliar. He couldn't remember the last time he was that nervous. Maybe sometime around his first assignment ages ago.

Keefe's reservation was registered at Lux Atlantic, room 3825 was booked for him – the usual room, just as he anticipated. According to the schedule he was going to arrive at 5pm but there was a slight chance he wouldn't keep this timing, common security measures. He was travelling there with his family, wife, two kids. So much of the unnecessary casualties, he thought. Not that it mattered, if they were in the way, they had to be removed. Just as her, he added with a beat of delay. If for some reason she decided to interfere with his plans, he would kill her, even though with a bit of regret. He would do it quick, with as little pain for her as possible, and surely not messily, if there really was no way to make her come around to his point of view. That was what he told himself but it didn't make him overly happy. It was his job, though. Sometimes crappy but he had learned to come over any emotional reservations, had any surfaced in him. And in all cases, he was the first he was concerned about, and since his life was on the line, too, if he failed, he was a dead man.

Leese was unsuspicious. Her life flowed in its calm bed, having no idea she was given the role of a bolt in a huge machinery. She didn't presume she was sharing every single moment of her life with someone she didn't even know.

"When it's over…" Jackson murmured to himself, gaze fixed on her over the steering wheel as she left her apartment building. He never finished the sentence. Maybe he couldn't, or maybe he simply didn't want to hear it out loud.

Somehow he saw his life in segments, periods but they didn't seem to have any connection. There was the period of the surveillance, then there was the Day, and then all the possible futures, but he never even tried to plan the transition between them. As the Day drew closer, he was sketching up scenarios where he'd be given the chance to meet her again, scenarios where she wasn't screaming, crying, trying to call the police, being disgusted by him and hating his guts. It took him quite a lot of brainwork, fantasy and energy to draw up something like that. He tended to forget that although he knew almost everything about her which made him familiar, almost friendly towards her like a good old friend, she knew nothing about him, and even the first things she was going to learn about him were everything but appealing but it didn't stop him constructing his own entertaining little scenes. His fantasies got reckless. Somehow the fact that she wasn't dating anyone created an unrealistic, illogical idea in him that the reason for it was that she was waiting for someone like him. In his mind they belonged together through the roles of the observer and the observed. The Lisa of this possible future wasn't repelled by the scheme he was going to pull on her. That Lisa accepted that the fact he knew so many things about her bound her to him without question or doubt. As if the possession and knowledge of the little facts and pieces of her life endowed him with power over her, maybe even with proprietary rights. If she was about to move, he'd be able to guess which direction she was going to choose, he could see their synchronized movements in his mind, like a pristine dance, however and wherever she squirmed, he would be waiting for her right there, he was sure of that. He loved this feeling. He already ruled her, and dominance meant possession. She was his, no doubt, and she was smart enough to recognize this, smart enough to go along with his plans. Future-Lisa was an accomplice in his life, a safe haven where he could always anchor. They would do together all the things she was doing now alone, with a lot more excitement pumped in the gaps, he would maybe move in her flat and stay there between assignments, they would make love every morning he was to leave (and other mornings too, for sure, and evenings as well as rainy weekend afternoons), and would leave later nonetheless but with that numb weakness and tremble in his muscles he loved so much, the pleasant, purring satisfaction he was craving for.

She was going to cooperate, it had to be that way. After all, a woman with a secluded life devoid of any adventure and challenge couldn't be a match for him. What resistance could she possibly put up to? None. All women could do was whining and making demands and lying; so predictable.

Six days. He wondered how it would happen, what his first words should be. This was going to be the first time he would speak to her, and at this thought his mouth went dry. How was she going to look at him? With what expression, what feelings and first impression in her eyes? Should he approach her nicely in the beginning, flirtatiously? He could easily see them chatting, small talks, casual conversation, then he would reveal his plans, and she would feel it was nothing she could defy, and that he didn't mean any harm to her, because it wasn't personal, it was his job. All he had to be was determined and fact-based to show her there was no room for disobedience, for questioning his authority, he controlled her.

Five days. It was early morning when the call came. Her mother was on the other end of the line; bad news, some boohoo, memory-scent condolences. Leese promised to catch a flight to Texas and be there at the funeral. All the better, he was telling to himself, she would be upset, pained, overwhelmed with sorrow over poor grandma's death, it was going to leave her with no power for objection.

Four days. She was packing. Black tops, black skirts, black shoes.

Jackson cursed under his breath, staring at the screen of his laptop. Her flight reservation. Return ticket scheduled for the Red Eye flight from Dallas to Miami. For a moment he panicked because she was returning to the city in the morning of the same day Keefe was checking-in at the hotel. Her grandmother could have chosen a better date to kick the bucket.

First he was considering waiting for her at the airport in Miami, and launching the plan only then, but it was risky. There was a chance Keefe would go to the hotel earlier, before her plane landed. No, he had to do it during the flight (he remembered she hated flying, and it filled him with satisfaction). Not easy, with all the passengers around, he's planned it otherwise but he had done more complex things in his life. Just keep her on a short leash. He booked a ticket for two days later, and then the return ticket for the Red Eye.

Three days. He found himself parking in front of her apartment, though he knew she'd flown off the previous afternoon. There was no reason for him to go there. The thing was he didn't have anything to do. He'd spent the last weeks -how many exactly? Seven? Eight? No, it couldn't be that many…- following her, and suddenly when she was gone, he couldn't occupy himself. It was almost like he was missing her, and it was ridiculous. Normally, today she'd do the grocery, the thought sneaked in his mind. He leaned his head on the steering wheel and tried to suppress the disgust he suddenly felt for himself.

Two days. Different city, different scenery, same cast, same script. He was watching her from a distance, feeling relaxed like he finally arrived home. She was running errands for her mother. There seemed to be a lot of things to arrange.

One day. Today. That night. He tiredly grabbed a coffee (they had stayed up quite far into the night in the house) but after one or two sips he threw it out. It made him feel nauseous. That or something else. She was welcoming guests at her grandmother's house, black dress, solemn face. Her brother and his family were also there, along with a few relatives. He followed them to the cemetery and was watching the funeral from beside a grave down the aisle. He could see her crying, pulling her mother in an affectionate hug. He was wondering if she'd cry again later that night. He wasn't too comfortable with women crying. It was an unnecessary and unsettling display of weakness.

When he got back to his hotel a special delivery envelope from his associate was waiting for him at the reception: it was her father's wallet, JR embedded in it, Joe Reisert, how perfect. What a coincidence, Joe Reisert, Jackson Rippner; he smiled at the conversation that had just formed in his head about what he was going to say to her, drenched with sarcasm, he was an expert if it came to irony. He emptied the wallet; credit cards, coins, some documents. And an old photo of her; lousy hairstyle again. He kept it nonetheless.

With a call he pre-arranged their seats for the flight (they had men everywhere), they had to sit next to each other and preferably with her at the window, it was crucial in his plans.

It was raining and the traffic was awful. He arrived at the airport early, there was still at least an hour till she would show up. He ran through the whole plan in his head for what seemed the umpteenth time and it would have been boring if he wasn't so downheartedly nervous. He was idling about in the lounge, playing the role of the overbusy, overconfident and slightly apathetic yuppie. Maybe it wasn't even a role play.

A long queue at the check-in desk. Delayed flight. She was still nowhere.

Just to kill time he bought a newspaper and was already halfway through it when she arrived, running, short of breath.

He smiled to himself, and stepped behind her in the line.


	10. The last chords: rerun

**A/N:** That's it, folks, the last chapter. I enjoyed writing this fic too much, I already terribly miss it.

_Thank you for reading it, and even more to those who took the trouble to leave a comment, every single one of them made my day:)_

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**Chapter 10: The last chords - rerun**

_-Now-_

After all those numberless painkiller-tasting days he still looked haggard, weakness from his injuries and maybe something else too still clinging on his form. Something was slowly, steadily and stealthily draining him, there was a leak on him, or so it felt, maybe the very symbolic leak in his throat, and through it he was losing energy, rationality, himself. A new man was being born from the ashes, ruins, but it was a cripple. A ghoul. It had a name and nothing else. He was almost translucent.

"Look what you did to me, Leese" he croaked at his own reflection in the mirror of his more and more casket-like flat, voice hoarse by the lack of usage, and he didn't see it was more of his doing than hers. He had yet to realize that along the line he'd done more damage to himself than she had. He had yet to realize that the process of planning his little revenge on her slowly and gradually was destroying him, too. His old confident self was of the past. It was now a skeleton, or like shredded rags hanging off of his shoulders. Smugness turned into lip-chewing, nail-digging irresolution topped with self-corrosive bitterness. His eyes were haunted, skin parchment-like. The contrast nearly toppled him.

He was slowly chiseling off the last bits of sanity, normality and humanity, even professionalism. He was sinking into an unhealthy state of mind, shredding the cold logic he'd always been so proud of, now it - its remnants rather - got tinted with obsessive, self-destructive mania. His logic, his shrewdness didn't drive him farther than her apartment. If he'd ever had his own life, it was gone now. He didn't exist outside the half-heartedly completed assignments and stalking her. Everything now pivoted on her.

Sometimes he felt he could live like that for eternity, being a spy, an outsider, a spectator of her life and still being a part of it, being a part of her fear, her nightmares, part of her anxiety when she glanced behind her for any sign of tails, the part of her that never ordered a Sea Breeze again. He felt no one knew her more than him, and he was indulging in this thought, sucking every dubious sip of pleasure out of it, no matter if it was irrational or even untrue, for that matter. It was a bond he wanted to exist between them, and he willed it to life with all he was worth.

It had to be over though, this chase, danse macabre, one way or another.

He was more of a maverick now, out for an unknown revenge. He wanted to take away from her what had been taken away from him but he couldn't name what it was. Killing her was an option but he realized it wasn't satisfying enough. Actually, revenge wasn't probably the best choice of words anymore: maybe he was seeking release.

When he forced himself to analyze the map of his emotions, the masochist he secretly was sometimes, the result was more than disturbing. He didn't hate her anymore, it wasn't as simple as one single emotion, something else, something complex was now channeled to her (something very close to fondness and admiration, twisted and grim at that; old hatred and blame had fermented and resulted in this mixture), and instead he hated their differences, he hated everything she was and he wasn't, and even what he was and she wasn't. He hated the rope pulling him to her and hated the uncrossable distance separating them, all in past acts, words and lifestyles, morals and ideas they believed in. He hated the impotence that tied him more firmly than any physical binding.

He hated he couldn't hate her, cheesy as it sounded. Sometimes black-and-white was easy. Simple. Good-bad, forgiveness-revenge, love-hate. Love. Hate. He was somewhere in between. Or worse, touching both extremities.

There seemed to be a barrier in his mind he couldn't crash through. Couldn't see beyond, either. Fog, chilly, thick and throttling, gnawed itself into the very recesses of his mind and ate up something crucial there. A safety bolt, probably: the border between the very primal inner self and what could be called human was disappearing. There were days, periods when he rarely acted consciously (he was still alive because functions were kept up solely by instinct – he actually couldn't name the last time when he caught himself eating or sleeping), he was moving around with the confusion and franticness of a half-tamed, loose animal. Restless and uneasy, like someone always on the run, he couldn't tell if he was the hunter or the hunted. Dissolving in reality, in sanity: he was in fear of disappearing somewhere beyond these, somewhere where nothing made any sense. Perhaps he was already there.

When she had thrashed him, maybe with that she had also pulled him apart. He very much suspected it.

So the fog, the chilly and thick and throttling, obscured his intentions even in his own eyes.

What he was trying to find an answer for, ridiculously and in a grotesque way, sounded like those cheap personality tests in women's magazines. Wedged in between the daily horoscope and celebrity gossip, right next to a lingerie ad, it might run under the title 'How much of a psychopath are you?'. So he had to answer the question: 'What shall I do to her?'. A: Kill her. B: Wound her. C: Leave her alone and ride into the sunset.

No, C, in fact, was not an option.

He had to meet her so she would know, he _needed_ her to know (the wish was now a new addition for his daily sustenance) he was out there, coming for her, thinking of her and there was no way in hell he would let her walk away with it. She had to know it wasn't over yet (he felt, suddenly, it wouldn't _ever_ be over, and maybe he didn't really mind it at the moment). Lisa, living her life in his shadow, every morning waking with the thought that it might be the day when he came again - he craved for accomplishing this. He imagined them living one life, a half of the same life that through their meetings would link. _You are mine_, he muttered with clinging-clawing conviction, and didn't suspect this belief ascended from a lopsided, one-sided addiction: _he was_ dependent of her, but his personality, his tattered, beaten but still very much fierce ego couldn't accept such a concept.

Marking her - a mutual noble gesture, it was a likely way. He had contemplated it for long, bouncing between the very extremities. Maybe he could do it gradually, in parts, showing up on a regular basis and grating her until she looked just as chopped up as him: a constant reminder, the recurrence of a primal séance, he liked the idea (he told himself it wasn't because so he would see her regularly). No, he wouldn't mutilate her, no. Only giving her a memory album of scars and fears, something to remember him by - not too original, he knew it. Maybe it was a subconscious desire to model, to shape her in his own likeness, at least from outside because he, somewhere deep, knew she'd never break, never surrender.

* * *

It was the exact day of the flight from months back, that night. No one could tell he had no knack for irony. Or style, for that matter. He thought of fetching a bottle of expensive wine - sleeping pill-free this time. Women were known to love all kinds of anniversaries, he was nothing but being considerate here.

He looked up at her windows, room alight behind the curtains. Old Lisa would be sitting on her couch, tangled up in a blanket with a cup of mint-cinnamon tea (no sugar, no honey), old movie soundtrack collections filtering from the stereo. New Lisa was most probably ironing to the same music. Not that he was anxious to confront her with a hot iron at hand but he stepped closer anyway (not even belatedly did he realize she would have been on home turf again – he had other concerns to chew on).

Maybe he wouldn't engage in a fight with her this time, he mused, suddenly unsure - this hesitation was, in fact, one of those very concerns. The image of his combat knife against her skin, velvety and warm, he remembered it, was now less appealing – actually, it was disturbing, confusing. Not because of the blood, pain, no, he had seen - and committed, too – his share of gore in his life to be indifferent toward it. He wasn't sure he had the strength in his arm to apply pressure on the handle, the sharp edge, to pull it along her skin, imperfection gushing forth on its trail. He fingered the wounds through his shirt and the scar just above the suprasternal notch on his neck – his own set of imperfection. They all cast a mental shadow, wounds on his soul, so to say. Somehow he imagined, or rather it felt that way, that the nick he was to draw on her skin would cast its shadow on _him_.

Up to that moment he hadn't realized the horrible fact that he couldn't hurt her without hurting himself: that if it was over for her, it was over for him too; that after he was done with her in any form and way, there was no going on for him anymore.

It was a horrible recognition. For a minute he felt suspended in the air, light-headed, shocked, even losing heart.

Maybe he would just show himself and walk away, he decided, suddenly lacking the link between the conscious part of his brain and his irrational, deeply embedded craving (actually, it was nothing else but the postponement of the moment of making a final decision). Just to see the shock on her face.

His stomach fluttered, flip-flopped. Meeting Lisa, with her actually seeing him and him seeing her, up that close; his vision tipped, discharging on the peripheries with yellow flickers. More than anything, he wanted to see his own reflection, this battered, pathetic reflection, in her eyes and she'd see her own in his; he needed it so he could be- what? He stared ahead blankly. Complete, perhaps. That, complete.

He smiled crookedly to himself, and stepped towards the door to her building.

_The End_

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A/N:

_For the last time, I really would like to know what you think, if the concept of showing Jackson going through the stages of obsession on and on again was obvious and clear. I tried to show it many ways from engaging him in collecting insignificant details to going from refering to her as Reisert to Leese in the end, and so on. I tried to avoid picturing him as some ruthless monster and more of a terribly confused human being._  
_Anyway, thank you for reading and commenting and faving this story. I sure as hell will write more Red Eye, next time trying to come up with a plot for a change, and actually bring Lisa in:D_


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